City restores water service; boil water notice still in effect

Broken valves in the area of the Parks Street road construction project led to a city-wide boil water notice on Tuesday night, Nov. 6. According to Public Works Director/Assistant City Manager Houston Satterwhite, a temporary patch has fixed the leak for now, but residents will need to continue boiling their water until the water is tested and approved for consumption.

During the leak, most of the water drained from the water towers, causing the city’s water system to go into conservation mode, which severely limited the water pressure for some residents in Breckenridge. The towers are more than 50 percent full and are continuing to fill up and water distribution should be restored to full power, Satterwhite said late Wednesday morning.

In conservation mode, the system’s pumps shut down. However, in the case of an emergency, the pumps would have been turned back on to allow the fire department to access water, Satterwhite said.

Water samples will be taken today and turned in for testing to make sure the water is safe to drink. “Hopefully, we’ll get a release tomorrow,” he said.

The city crews are working on isolating the problem with the valves, Satterwhite said, so that when the permanent repair is made, they will be required to issue an additional boil water notice for a smaller area of the community.

The break happened in an area that is scheduled to have the more-than-90-year-old water pipes replaced as part of the current road construction project. The replacement of the water pipes, which were likely installed between 1918 and 1925, is intended to reduce incidences of broken pipes and boil water notices.